All posts tagged traffic

Indonesia scored two big victories in recent weeks against smugglers of pig-nosed turtles. The Wall Street Journal caught up with Chris R. Shepherd, the regional director of Traffic Southeast Asia, for his insights into the latest busts and what challenges are ahead.Read More »

Jakarta plans to test a ban on motorbikes along main thoroughfares starting Dec. 17 in an effort to reduce traffic in the congested capital. The Wall Street Journal talked to people in Jakarta to get their thoughts. Read More »

Jakarta has restarted construction of a planned monorail system after a five-year stall in the project, aimed at bringing modern, mass transit trains to a city long choked by traffic jams.

The groundbreaking of the two-line, elevated monorail came just a week after construction commenced on a separate $1.6-billion mass rapid underground rail. Both projects are seen as an attempt to stave off total gridlock in one of the world’s fastest-growing metropolises. Read More »

Officials in this booming, traffic-clogged city have officially scrapped a plan to ease gridlock by restricting which days drivers can use the roads according to whether their license plate ends in an odd or even number.

Rather than go with the “odd-even license plate policy,” Jakarta has reverted back to an electronic road pricing system, which officials say they plan to implement within the first few months of 2014.

The wrangling over plans aimed at tackling Jakarta’s notoriously bad traffic are symptomatic of wider policy uncertainties in Indonesia, a country where a lack of infrastructure has long given investors pause. And while officials dally over which plan is better, Jakarta’s traffic has grown worse – creating widespread frustration and cutting into the hours people spend at work. Read More »

Metropolitan Manila, the Philippines’ capital region that is home to 12 million people, is looking to Latin America for a way to ease its worsening traffic.

Bloomberg

Since the 1990s, Filipinos with cars registered in the Metro Manila area have not been allowed to drive their cars during rush hours one day a week. Now Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Francis Tolentino is proposing to make that two days a week, just like car-busy Rio has done.

He said the idea is among the measures recommended by the MMDA’s traffic engineering office to ease congestion in the center of Philippine economic activity. The office has also recommended limiting delivery trucks’ travel in the evenings and constructing bus rapid transit, which has helped Rio move more commuters. Read More »

Jakarta transportation officials took their foot off the pedal this week on a plan to try to loosen up the notoriously horrible traffic in Indonesia’s capital city.

The idea is to restrict which days cars can be on the road by whether their license plate’s last digit ends in an odd or even number. Taxis and similar business-type vehicles, motorcycles and public transportation wouldn’t be covered by the 6 am to 8 pm regulation.

The plan had already been delayed twice and was aimed to start in June. Officials say they need more time to get reliable public buses to provide wheels for drivers suddenly limited, and to figure out how to enforce the rule, given they don’t feel they have enough police to do so now. Read More »

JAKARTA – While there are no quick fixes to Jakarta’s chronic traffic gridlock, at least the city is trying to improve the Internet speeds along its overburdened road ways.

Jakartans – who spend more time on Twitter and Facebook, and in traffic, than almost any other group in the world – can waste time more efficiently from next month as the capital plans to install free wireless Internet on along its main roads. Read More »

JAKARTA – Increasingly gridlocked traffic and regular flooding of much of Indonesia’s capital continue to be the main concerns of Jakarta’s citizens as they gear up to vote in the gubernatorial election scheduled for July.

The University of Indonesia’s Center for Political Studies said over the weekend that more than 25% of the 742 residents it surveyed in the city picked traffic as Jakarta’s biggest problem. Almost 22% named floods as a major scourge in the sprawling, mega metropolis. Trash and pollution came in third with about 11% of those surveyed saying it was their top gripe. Read More »

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E-commerce sites and mobile apps are drawing on data they’ve collected from users to better understand how and when people shop during the Islamic holy month. Here’s a look at some of what they’ve discovered.

All that burning rubbish in Indonesia may be taking its toll, with nearly a quarter of people surveyed in a recent poll saying waste management was the most prominent environmental issue in the country.